The recent blog post on how to reduce hostility complained about people who tell answerers not to answer bad questions. However, the "How to Answer" document clearly recommends not answering bad questions (e.g. questions that have been asked and answered many times, questions that solicit opinions rather than evidence-based answers, etc.). What's the actual policy here?

Is there an "official" answer from a CM or someone about whether "How to Answer" is dictating actual site policy here? (The linked question has answers from the community, but no "official" answer from a staff member).

Also, what's the point of having this document if we're not supposed to point out the recommendation to people anymore?

As always HC>Employees>FAQ>Moderators>Users. Just go down the chain if there's something you need more detail about. Ignore anything that contradicts the higher elements in the chain.
– BraiamApr 28 '18 at 20:04

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I think answering bad questions is frowned upon especially when it's seen as rep-whoring. If so, I don't see a need for a rule: experienced users downvote and inexperienced users don't upvote or accept answers that much, so the poster will learn quickly. As for me, I'm only bothered when unanswerable questions pollute the list of unanswered questions in the tags where I want to help and clear backlogs.
– NemoApr 29 '18 at 7:08

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That blog post would seem to contradict a lot of previously given advice on quality control, chattiness, etc., and until we get some hard clarification on exactly what's going on, I'm not sure anyone can draw firm conclusions.
– Michael BerryApr 30 '18 at 12:02

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Maybe that blog post should just be ignored. We don't consider SO employees to be infallible do we? That post looks like a swing and miss at something, not sure what.
– President James K. PolkApr 30 '18 at 21:13

3 Answers
3

I believe the blog post may be trying to differentiate between choosing not to answer bad questions and users castigating users who choose to do so. That is, the blog post does not contradict the notion that it's not a good idea to answer such questions. It's saying that you should not confront a user who chooses to do so. So it's not a contradiction.

Of course, this has the effect of removing any real enforcement of the rule.

@Artemis Fowl: Good for you. Some people out there aren't actually trying to be better - they ask not in good faith but for the sake of finding a scapegoat to retaliate against. I've personally been scapegoated myself more than a few times by explaining downvotes that were either mine, or others' (sometimes in cases where I upvoted their answer), and getting lashed out at for trying to help.
– BoltClock♦Apr 30 '18 at 12:52

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@Artemis Fowl: Sometimes an answer of yours may get downvoted for reasons you disagree with. I trust that you will voice your disagreement respectfully. The same can't be said for some others.
– BoltClock♦Apr 30 '18 at 12:56

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@BoltClock: "Sometimes an answer of yours may get downvoted for reasons you disagree with. I trust that you will voice your disagreement respectfully." This is a problem with explaining downvotes. Even if the disagreement is respectful... I don't want to hear it. I've downvoted and moved on to other questions. I've put up a signpost that says, "Don't waste your time on this". There is no reason why I should now have to get into a discussion, respectful or not, about why that sign is there. To do otherwise means a lot fewer signs get put up, to the detriment of the site.
– Nicol BolasApr 30 '18 at 13:40

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The "enforcement" generally takes the form of the question being deleted and the answer with it. FWIW, I added the relevant section to "how to answer" 4 years ago after growing tired of complaints from answerers that their answers were getting deleted; I was literally trying to save folks frustration. The notion that we should go out of our way to "punish" answerers whose work will already been lost is... Kinda crazy.
– Shog9May 3 '18 at 16:18

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@Shog9: "The "enforcement" generally takes the form of the question being deleted and the answer with it." It's not really "enforcement" if the person has no idea that anything has even happened or why it happened. That's one of the big problems with so many of SO's "enforcement" actions. You can't just have something make problems disappear; that doesn't correct anyone's behavior. You have to say "this thing isn't right"; otherwise they'll never know. Communication about rule violations on SO is terrible.
– Nicol BolasMay 3 '18 at 16:23

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I'm well aware, @Nicol; fielded plenty of meta posts & emails from confused answerers. That's why I added that section of the help page, which is linked to from both the new-user answer pop-up help on the answer form and the deleted answer help page. The missing piece here is a link from your profile somewhere when you go to look for the answer you wrote; I have to admit, that'd probably help a lot.
– Shog9May 3 '18 at 16:49

So, there you go: if you would like to dive head-first into debates about your answer (probably you misunderstood a poorly-written question and wrote an answer that doesn't address the OP's problem, again, because they failed to clearly state it), then nobody can stop you. If you would like to waste time trying to decipher a poorly formatted question in order to answer it to the best of your ability, you're free to do so.

You can do whatever you want: if you want to answer a question, you can do it. Nobody says you mustn't answer "bad" questions because it's impossible to judge whether a question is "bad" or "good": it can be totally illegible for some people, but it may be very well understandable for you. If you face issues after having answered the question (because you misunderstood it, or the OP is constantly changing it for whatever reason and asks you to reflect his changes in your answer or something like this), this was your choice.

and you should't be surprised by people judging the quality of the answer.
– Kevin BApr 28 '18 at 20:23

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@KevinB, exactly, because this is what the vote buttons are there for.
– ForceBruApr 28 '18 at 20:41

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By the same token, it also says that "not all answers can or should be answered here." Couldn't you argue that that means that it's a site policy issue?
– EJoshuaS - Reinstate MonicaApr 28 '18 at 21:02

@EJoshuaS, yes, not all questions can be answered because some of them are hard to understand or can't even be classified as actual questions. Yes, not all questions should be answered because 1) you can't answer all of the questions, and should answer only the ones you have a definite answer for; 2) poor (this characteristic is highly subjective) questions may cause all sorts of issues described in my answer. However, all of this is just some advice, which you have every right not to take into consideration.
– ForceBruApr 28 '18 at 21:08

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Many bad questions are perfectly clear and unambiguous, and the posted answers are technically correct. But the question is bad because it's a no-effort homework dump. Personally, I don't approve of technically correct, well-written code being down-voted, but I totally understand why it happens. We don't want to encourage homework dumps. But merely DV'ing the answerers doesn't seem to discourage them very much, and it does nothing IMHO to stop the 1 rep OPs from posting their homework dumps.
– PM 2RingApr 29 '18 at 7:35

A few questions are hard to judge, most are easy, none are impossible.
– Ben VoigtApr 29 '18 at 16:59

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"it's impossible to judge whether a question is "bad" or "good" -- I disagree. Once somebody asked a question on the grounds of helping their son get into a college course. Clearly immoral IMO (others who did their own work could therefore get denied), and there were still karma-whores, er "users", who answered
– DexygenApr 30 '18 at 12:09

@GeorgeJempty, this question might be tremendously immoral, but otherwise perfectly on-topic, well-formulated and well-formatted. Doesn't this make this question "good" and suitable for SO?
– ForceBruApr 30 '18 at 12:30

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"it can be totally illegible for some people, but it may be very well understandable for you" - I've seen a few cases of this. Usually questions using terminology specific to some niche technical subject (like Reed Solomon). In some instances, such questions have been downvoted or even closed, until a comment is made to note that the question is understandable to someone familiar with the subject matter, and usually the question get's reopened, perhaps after an edit to help explain the terminology used.
– rcgldrMay 3 '18 at 16:05

And little makes me sadder than comments on answers saying, “Don’t answer questions like this – it encourages them.” Now, some questions are off-topic. (I’m genuinely sorry, but we simply can’t explain how a glass pitcher can smash through a brick wall with no apparent injuries; we are a programming site.) But it’s totally cool to answer questions without giving a grilled poop sandwich about exactly what’s allowed. It’s fine to volunteer in one way without being expected to read and enforce every rule and meta discussion since forever.

A draft of this blog post was briefly circulated to moderators for feedback before it was posted, and I thanked Jay personally for this section. I've been arguing thisfor years, but comments berating people for simply trying to be helpful are counterproductive. Volunteers who answer questions are the most valuable resource for the site, and this works to drive them away while doing nothing at all for the quality problem.

Bad askers will keep coming, whether they get their questions answered or not. The number of question-ban-evaders I've dealt with who never got any answers, yet kept coming back with new accounts, illustrates this. As long as Stack Overflow sits on top of Google search results, people desperate to have their questions answered will keep coming. On the flip side, I've talked with good answerers who decided to reduce their participation on the site because of negative comments they received telling them not to answer certain things.

Not all questions can or should be answered here. Save yourself some
frustration and avoid trying to answer questions which...

...are unclear or lacking specific details that can uniquely identify
the problem.

...solicit opinions rather than facts.

...have already been asked and answered many times before.

...require too much
guidance for you to answer in full, or request answers to multiple
questions.

...are not about programming as defined in the help center.

Don't forget that you can edit the question you're answering to
improve the clarity and focus - this can reduce the chances of the
question being closed or deleted.

Does "save yourself some frustration" mean that we should guarantee that those doing this experience some frustration? That's not my reading. This is advice for those answering, not for those moderating the site. Rather than going after people trying to be helpful, address the problem at the source: the bad questions.

This might lead to "some frustration" as answers are deleted along with bad or off topic questions, or those answers languish with no votes due to poor visibility. That's what I see this documentation warning against. Its goal is to give answerers the best chance of having their contributions be positively received. However, I can think of ways that this page could be worded differently to convey this in a clearer manner, and I can see why it is being read by some as moderation policy.

When it comes to enforcement, the wording in that blog post is consistent with the way that I and other moderators have reviewed flags on comments like this for the last several years. I delete almost all flagged comments that criticize people for answering questions the commenter did not like.

Good points - I have seen your Meta posts arguing that commenting telling people not to answer is not constructive. In some ways, though, it does seem like the "How to Answer" page should probably be edited to clarify that this section is just giving advice rather than a site rule, especially given that some of the other things (avoid "thanks!" and "me too!" answers, avoid link-only answers, etc.) are actual policy that are valid grounds for deleting the answer entirely.
– EJoshuaS - Reinstate MonicaApr 29 '18 at 20:44

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The site protocols are unclear & contradictory. Constant denial about this from staff & moderators.
– philipxyApr 30 '18 at 9:01

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Politely asking someone not to answer an off topic question is not "berating". So, a straw man argument. Berating would be against the "be nice" policy.
– RaedwaldApr 30 '18 at 9:09

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Answering low quality questions isn't actually helpful. You have a false premise that people going around spending all of their time asking low quality questions are being helpful. And telling someone that, and possibly why, their answer isn't helpful is appropriate behavior. Telling people they aren't allowed to tell an answerer why their answer isn't a useful answer is so far against the idea of a site with high quality standards. That you go around actively deleting constructive feedback on the quality of answers says a lot about where the site is going.
– ServyApr 30 '18 at 12:36

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Additionally, yes, there will be some people that will keep posting questions no matter what happens, no matter how many questions go unanswered. But that's not all of them. Just because not answering low quality questions doesn't remove all low quality questions entirely doesn't mean it isn't still helpful for the site. Lots of people do stop asking questions (or better still, learn how to ask better questions) when their low quality questions don't get answered. Don't let perfection be the enemy of the good.
– ServyApr 30 '18 at 12:36

There is definitely some point where we have to draw the line, though. If a question is so unclear or incomplete that we can't even tell if the answerer is addressing the problem at all, I think that that would be a very good reason to downvote and suggest that they hold off answering until the OP edits to clarify.
– EJoshuaS - Reinstate MonicaApr 30 '18 at 21:12

Out of curiosity: what would you do with help vampires who simply don't care if they're following site rules or contributing positively to the community as long as they get their answer? Is it OK to ask people not to feed trolls or vamps?
– EJoshuaS - Reinstate MonicaApr 30 '18 at 21:18

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@EJoshuaS - The best way to address that is to go after the source. In my experience, whether or not someone gets an answer doesn't impact whether the asker keeps coming back to the site. Rather than commenting that someone shouldn't be answering a particular question, act on the question itself. Vote and act on the answer based on its own technical merits. The only things that stop truly desperate bad askers are question bans, deletion of puppets and voting rings, and IP-level blocks (if they evade question bans with new accounts). In many cases, they only go away when they get an answer.
– Brad Larson♦Apr 30 '18 at 21:33

"whether they get their questions answered or not." but bad question will not be deleted if an answer with upvote exist.
– StargateurMay 1 '18 at 6:05

^That, and it sets a bad example. For however long the question stays up, it broadcasts the message that this question good enough for an answer. This happens often: when I want to point a new user to quality posts as examples to learn from, I would've had to manually pick good questions as examples to learn from. This couldn't possibly be correct.
– Passer ByMay 2 '18 at 14:56

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So edit the question to be a good example then, @PasserBy. Funny how the help center advises that too but no one seems too bent on going around "enforcing" it.
– Shog9May 3 '18 at 16:20

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I don't remember exact rules, but AFAIR if a question has negative score and no answers, it gets automatically deleted after some time. Answering poor questions makes them either persist on site permanently or require some users to invest their time in closing it and deleting. Close vote queue has 8.1k now.
– Tadeusz KopecMay 7 '18 at 10:01